Ja Rule

Netflix and Hulu both released documentaries about the disastrous Fyre Festival this past week. Fyre Fraud and Fyre follow the failed music festival and its co-founders Billy McFarland and Ja Rule. The audience response was generally positive. Ja Rule, on the other hand, had some qualms. He tweeted, “I … More »

The lamentable story of Fyre Festival will live on, thanks to a new Netflix documentary that weaves a narrative of the entire abysmal string of events leading up to the disaster of a music festival.

For anyone looking for a tutorial on how not to organize a music festival, Ja Rule and Billy McFarland are the ideal instructors. The failed and now infamous “festival” ended in thousands of people stranded on an island in The Bahamas. As a result, McFarland will be facing up to six years in prison and owes more than $25 million in damages.

According to Netflix, the documentary will be told by the organizers themselves. The two-minute trailer showcases the mass panic of the workers as they attempted to prepare for the incoming fans, knowing that the conditions were not suitable to host them. It also displays behind the scenes moments with both McFarland as he conned investors to come on board, even though the execution of the festival was becoming increasingly unlikely.

The documentary will be titled FYRE: The Greatest Party that Never Happened and is set to be released on Netflix January 18.

The first in a slew of documentaries and fictionalizations about the ill-fated Fyre Festival is scheduled to hit Netflix next week (1/18). It’s called FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, and it was directed by Chris Smith, whose documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (also with Netflix) got nominated for an … More »

In case the Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland being sentenced to six years in prison didn’t satisfy the narrative ending needs, Netflix looks to fill in the blanks with a new documentary, FYRE, about the disastrous music festival. The streamlining service recently released the trailer to the documentary, which showcases the expectations versus reality facade promoted by McFarland and Ja Rule. According to Netflix, the documentary will be told by the organizers themselves.

FYRE will be released on Netflix on January 18. Additionally, Hulu will be running a docuseries about the event, set to air in 2019. Even Seth Rogen and The Lonely Island mentioned interest in making a movie with a similar story line to the cataclysmic failure.

The Netflix documentary was directed by Chris Smith, who made the documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, about Jim Carrey’s transformation into performance artist and comedian Andy Kaufman.

Get your exclusive first look at FYRE — a revealing new doc about the insanity and rapid unraveling of Fyre Festival: the greatest party that never happened. Premieres January 18. #NetflixNewsWeekpic.twitter.com/B4iaR3UJwM

If you thought you’d heard the last of the corporate shitshow that was Fyre Festival, well then you don’t know how pop culture works in 2018! There are multiple projects in the works about Billy McFarland and Ja Rule’s mess of a fest — there’s a Hulu multi-part documentary … More »

More than a year after the train wreck that was Fyre Festival, Seth Crossno and co-plaintiff Mark Thompson have won their lawsuit against the disastrous event’s founder, Billy McFarland. The blogger who chronicled the vastly underdelivered Bahamian event, Crossno, and Thompson are the first festival victims to win a suit against McFarland. Their attorney Stacy Miller told Vice News, “I think there’s going to be a lot of people looking to collect, but we’ll be first.” Miller has delivered, to the tune of $5 million.

Together, the two men paid $13,000 for travel, accommodations, and luxury VIP passes. As it goes, Crossno and Thompson ended up on a storm-ridden island with disheveled tents, sandwich lunches with less dignity than prison food, and none of the “glamorous” amenities that lured high-rolling festival goers in from all over the world. According to Miller, each plaintiff was awarded $1.5 million in compensatory damages for hotels, flight, mental anguish, pain, and suffering in addition to $1 million in punitive damages.

The win came after McFarland failed to show up to court for over a year, piling on his current jail sentencing stemming from two counts of wire fraud. These new charges were brought against Ja Rule‘s “tech buddy” since the Fyre Festival incident, alleging he was still scamming people while out on bail. Old habits don’t die quick enough, it seems.

As to whether or not McFarland will be able to pay the plaintiffs, Miller seems optimistic. Despite failing to pay attorneys and crisis management groups for their services, a recent motion filed by federal prosecutors in McFarland’s criminal case suggests he has cash tucked away and makes $40,000 per month from freelance work.

Vice News also reported Crossno recently applied for the expired Fyre trademark, working on a new podcast called “Dumpster Fyre,” where he will discuss his hellish experience in depth.

Expected to air in 2019, the docuseries is in developmental stages, overseen by Billboard, Mic, and leading producer, The Cinemart. The Cinemart is memorable for its work on Jay-Z’s TV miniseries, Time: The Kalief Browder Story, and continues to collaborate with the rapper on Paramount Network’s six-part documentary series, Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story.

The series will feature interviews from inside sources, including local Bahamians, the duped attendees who were stranded upon their arrival at the defunct festival, vendors, and investigators. The documentary will additionally offer viewers hours of “never-before-seen footage,” leaked documents, emails, and recordings.

McFarland was arrested in June on two counts of wire fraud and two counts of making false statements to a bank after he reportedly defrauded investors in Fyre Media. McFarland allegedly presented fake documents to convince investors to contribute more than $3 million to his company and the Bahamian festival.

In addition to the criminal charges, a number of civil lawsuits have been filed against McFarland and the festival’s other co-founder, Ja Rule, who has not been criminally charged.

Attendees of the late April festival paid thousands of dollars for the luxury event and were promised the “unparalleled best in music, cuisine, design and hospitality on a private island in the Exumas.” When they arrived, however, they were met with the total chaos of a completely underprepared event.